By Luke Hendry

The Intelligencer

These soldiers may be retired, but their memories remain on active duty.

Seventy years after enlisting to fight in the Second World War, men of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade gathered Friday morning at the Belleville Armouries.
The historic brick building was filled with the sound of bagpipes and marching as the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment marked the 66th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Sicily near the village of Pachino. Representatives of four other Canadian units involved in the invasion were also present.

The landing of July 10, 1943, the young volunteers of the Hasty Ps, as the regiment is known, began what would become a more than two-year fight through Europe.

Ivan Gunter, who enlisted as a boy from Coe Hill, south of Bancroft and later won the Military Medal, was among the marchers.

He said there is only a handful of living “39ers” — those who joined the service in 1939, the first year of the roughly six-year war.

Gunter and “Blackie” Simpson are among them.

Simpson said if not for the annual July service and bumping into past comrades he would think little about the war.

“I put all that behind me,” he said.

But the memories reside close to the surface. Simpson was telling stories — both good and bad — at length Friday.

“You had to give a lot of orders that you didn’t particularly like, and you had to do it in a snap,” said Simpson.

As a platoon sergeant, he said, he “had a hard time keeping section commanders. They kept getting killed.”

He remembered telling a 19-year-old soldier he was being promoted to the command role. The teenager tried to refuse it, said Simpson, who added he had to order the junior soldier to accept.

“The next day he got killed, and that hit me hard.”

He said the effects of the campaign set in one unremarkable night near the Rubicone River north of Rimini, Italy.

“My whole body was shaking,” said Simpson. He said he was no more scared that night than any other, but for some reason, the war got to him before dawn that morning.

“I thought, ‘Boy, I’m glad it’s dark because if these guys could see me they’d never follow me anywhere.’”

Though the Allies were victorious in pressing through Europe to their 1945 victory, Simpson’s eyes drifted to the ceiling as he described the period after D-Day, the June 6, 1944 invasion of Nazi-occupied France.

“It was tough … Once D-Day happened in Europe we were the forgotten bunch. We couldn’t get reinforced.”

The Second World War wasn’t the only conflict mentioned during the service.

“Far too frequently we are having repatriation ceremonies at CFB Trenton,” said Horne, who attends those ceremonies regularly.

Today’s Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan deserve recognition just as their ancestors do, he said.

“We acknowledge them as we acknowledge you,” said Horne, paying tribute to the fallen who have “transferred to the white battalion.”

The names of several associated with the regiment who died in the past year were then read.

And this year there was a sad link between wars: on the list was the name of Cpl. Mark McLaren, 23, who with two comrades was killed last December in Afghanistan. McLaren had earlier been a reservist with the Hasty Ps’ Peterborough garrison.

“Personally I wouldn’t want to fight in a war like they are now,” veteran Simpson said. “We knew who our enemies were. These kids, they’ve got no idea. They’re going town the road and it could be anybody.”

In the past several years, veterans of the 48th Highlanders of Canada and The Royal Canadian Regiment have joined in the Hasty Ps’ invasion anniversary service.

This year, however, there were representatives of the 2nd Field Regiment and the Royal Canadian Engineers, rounding out the wartime brigade.

“Together again,” Howard Adamson, president of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment Association, said proudly. He said it was the first time all five units had gathered for the service.

“That’s the biggest one we’ve had in recent years,” Adamson added.

Though not all present were veterans, he said, 78 past and present soldiers marched in the brief parade to and from the property’s cenotaph. Watching were many family members, military band musicians, reservists and others.

Sicily veteran Bob Wigmore of Belleville, now the Hasty Ps’ honourary lieutenant-colonel, said an estimated 130 people attended